Radio resources on mobile radio networks currently are and will for the foreseeable future be a scarce resource. Already, data traffic used for paging of mobile entities consumes a considerable fraction of the total available radio resources. At the same time, such data traffic dedicated to paging increases for an increasing number of mobile devices. Paging is needed to fulfill a number of tasks, such as to identify the cell in which a mobile entity is currently located in.
Paging of mobile entities in a 2G, 3G (and 4G) context is currently executed in a routing area, a set of routing areas, a location area, or a set of location areas. Such areas comprise a number of radio cells or cells. The amount of radio resources in a routing area needed for paging scales with increasing number of mobile entities attached to the routing area. With the massive addition of devices to mobile networks that require low bandwidth, know as the “50 Billion” initiative, the amount of paging can outnumber the available/acceptable radio resources on radio channels.
In particular, the number of “machine to machine” (M2M) devices is increasing. Such devices typically automatically send or receive some type of information over a radio network from time to time. Often, such devices are stationary at one position and do not move because they form part of a stationary system. When the number of M2M Devices reaches a significant size, e.g. some millions in a network of some 20-30 millions conventional subscribers, the paging channels would be overloaded. Then operators would have to assign a second channel per cell for paging. As the expected average revenue of the M2M devices is low compared to conventional subscribers, such an additional channel is unlikely to generate revenue. Therefore, increasing the available resources would be costly and technically challenging.
Therefore, with increasing numbers of mobile entities, the available radio resources are more and more exhausted due to the increasing amount of resources dedicated to paging of mobile entities.